Decisions, decisions

Deciding on which strategy to use for your upgrade is fairly simple once you know the drivers. Questions that need answers are:

1. Do I combine my unicode upgrade with my ECC 6.0 upgrade? I already have all the resources mobilized for testing, and Unicode does not add any new functionality.
2. Do I combine my unicode upgrade with another initiative that involves a migration, eg. Server consolidation, hardware platform change, data center move, etc...
3. When do I convert all my custom ABAP development to be Unicode compliant?

Combining the Unicode conversion with an ECC 6.0 upgrade - Should you?

This is SAP's recommended strategy. There are a lot of synergies that makes it an obvious choice. Be aware however that the real driver for this decision should be your cut over to go live window. Since converting to Unicode involves exporting your database and reimporting it, your total conversion runtime will be driven by the size of your database, the hardware available and how well the process was performance tuned.

If for example your database export/import process runs for 60 hours, followed immediately before or after your ECC 6.0 upgrade which takes 48 hours, you need to schedule 108 hours of business down time. If your team works 24 hours a day and there are no problems, this means you need 4.5 days of down time for cutover. Can the business be down that long?

There is also the concept of layering of risk. When you have a problem you have to solve, is it a Unicode problem or an upgrade problem? What if the Unicode process runs longer than planned on cut over weekend? Having a good understanding of your runtime for the Unicode conversion is therefore crucial in your decision to combine the two projects

Making your ABAP programs Unicode compliant - another decision point

This can be the long pole in the tent. If you have hundreds of custom ABAP programs, converting them to the new, stricter Unicode syntax can take a lot of time and resources. If this is a large effort, we would recommend this be done as a seperate project prior to the Unicode/SAP upgrade.

It is important to know that your ABAP programs can be made Unicode compliant in your existing system before you do the SAP unicode conversion. Meaning that you can seperate the ABAP Unicode conversion from the rest of the R/3 system Unicode conversion.

If you only have a few custom programs, then obviously you don't need a seperate project for this effort, it can be combined with the conversion itself.